Typically, when a customer purchases storage device, such as network attached storage or a direct attached storage device, with a redundant array of independent disks (RAID), it is delivered in an initial state that requires initialization. RAID initialization is a process of reading the drives and establishing the RAID data, such as mirroring and parity. Normally, the initialization process does not require significant time because the storage device may initially store a relatively small amount of data and the RAID data is incrementally added as more data is added to the device. The initialization process, however, can require significant time because it requires the RAID device to incrementally calculate the parity data, etc. across the various drives when there is a large amount of data and/or the drive capacities are large.